The Trick Is
by Britani Gael
Summary: David doesn’t remember what happened, but he knows it’s probably Jack’s fault.


**Title**: The Trick Is

**Author**: Brittany

**Fandom**: Newsies

**Rating**: PG

**Words**: 3000

* * *

There's a man sprawled across the cobblestone paving of a dark and dirty alley, and Jack's standing over him with a smug look on his face. David's only ten feet away, he's on his knees and he doesn't know why—he knows they hurt. They hurt about as much as he'd expect if, say, he'd fallen down on the stones, so he figures that's what probably happened.

He's got no idea how he got here.

Jack's giving the guy on the ground a long look, waiting to see if he's going to get up again. "Y'alright, there, Dave?" he asks.

It's been a whole second and David _still_ doesn't know where he is. The alley looks familiar—because it looks like every other alley in the whole city—it's got a fire escape and a couple of piles of garbage, the light coming in from the widows up above is a bright smear that hurts to look at and there's someone creeping out of the shadows in the corner and—

David starts. "Jack! The other guy's—"

Jack ducks the nightstick without turning around.

The fight's over in a second. Jack spins around hard, his hand are already up in from of his face. It only takes a couple punches—the guy's in a _uniform_, what—before the man's down for the count, slumping against the brick wall with a grunt.

Jack brushes something invisible off the front of his shirt, and crosses the alley.

"C'mon," he says, holding out a hand to help David up. "If they ain't called the bulls already, they're gonna. The rest of the guys is waitin'."

David just looks at the offered hand, he doesn't move to take it. "I think I missed something," he announces.

Jack gives him a funny look. "Wouldn't be the first time," he says, after a moment. "C'mon." He waits another few seconds, then he rolls his eyes and reaches down.

"I can stand up on my—" David's on his feet before he can even finish the rest of his sentence and he doesn't remember standing. He blinks. "How…"

"Let's _go_."

Jack takes off, and David stumbles after him, rubbing the back of his head with his hand.

The "guys" turn out of be Mush, Blink, and Skittery. They're around the corner, a block away from the alley, hunched up against the wall and out of sight as best as they can manage. When Jack approaches, they seem to breathe a collective sigh of relief, and then they start crowding.

"Hey, Jack, hey, what happened back there?"

"We heard you was fightin', but you said to beat it, so…"

"Ya beat 'em good, Jack, huh?"

Jack doesn't answer, which strikes David as odd. "Close one, eh?" He's slapping Blink on the back with one hand and doing the same to Mush with the other. But he's grinning right at David. "Y'hoit," he says.

David stares at him blankly—Jack sounds far away, and whatever he's saying is coming across as just _noise_. So David nods, just going along with it. "Yeah, sure."

In response, Jack's grin fades, he drops what he's ding and puts both his hands on David's shouders. "Are ya _hurt_?" he repeats, speaking slowly.

"Oh."

Jack waits for an answer; the rest of the boys are quieting down to listen.

After a pause he knows is entirely too long, David manages, "No, no, I'm fine." He shrugs Jack's hands off. "I'm just a little—"

"Bleedin'."

It's Skittery who says it, and everyone turns to look at him. He shrugs, and then he points. "He's bleedin'," he says. "Lookit his shirt."

And they all look back at David.

No one's more surprised than he is. There's a smear of red—no, a couple of them, across the breast pocket of his shirt, a couple more smears down lower. He reaches up to touch them, and he notes how much the stains look like fingerprints. He glances down at his hands.

His fingers and palms are completely covered in blood, and even if he doesn't know where it came from, he knows it's his. It's the sinking feeling in his stomach that tells him. "I don't—"

The newsies erupt into excited chatter.

"They hit ya, Davey? I didn't—"

"Nah, they was gonna, but Cowboy soaked 'em—"

"—I seen that, he soaked 'em good—"

"Not good _enough_, if they was really—"

David cringes at the noise, and the way they're suddenly crowding even closer. He reflexively reaches up to rub at the back of his head again, it's itching like nothing else. He feels a warm trickling running down the back of his neck.

"Shut up, all youse." The voice cuts through th chatter, it's calm and no one questions it—they all fall silent. With that out of the way, Jack reaches out and puts his hands back on David's shoulders, his expression unreadable. "Where ya bleedin' from, David?"

David opens his mouth to say he doesn't know, but that's suddenly a whole lot less important, but he can't _see_ anymore, and everyone's yelling again.

"Grab him, will ya, _grab _him!"

* * *

"Stop tellin' us that," Jack's saying.

David turns his head to look at him, his whole skull is heavy and it takes him a little while. Jack's got David's arm around his neck, he's got his own arm around David's shoulders. On the other side, Blink's doing the same thing, and between the two of them they're walking down some poorly lit street David doesn't recognize, his legs are moving but he doesn't think he's doing much of the work.

He looks back at Jack. "What'm I saying?"

Jack rolls his eyes. "Forget it."

Something's pretty wrong. It's obvious in Jack's testy tone, in the way Blink's keeping his gaze away and chewing on his lower lip. David thinks on all that for a second, and then his eyelids start getting heavy. His head falls forward.

Jack jostles him, hard enough that David picks his head up again. "Stop doin' _that_, too," he says.

"What'm I doing?"

"Leavin'."

"Oh." He shakes his head slowly, which hurts—a _lot_, in fact, but it's pretty easy to ignore that, and then it just goes away. "Sorry," he says.

"_That_," Jack says, with an intensity that's startling, enough to make Blink on the other side cringe, a little. "That's what you gotta quit sayin', _that_."

"Oh." David wonders if he's said that too many times, already. He doesn't remember saying sorry, either, but it's probably better idea not to mention that—he can't tell what's the wrong thing to say. "Right."

At the next corner Jack goes left and Blink goes right, David stands as still as he can while his legs are sliding out from under him. It takes everyone a second to realize they're heading in three different directions, and then Jack and Blink jump right back.

"Woah, he's—"

"Got'm."

David's head falls forward again, it's heavy and he can't help it. "Isn't it time to go home?"

"You ain't goin' home, 'cause me and Blink ain't carryin' you all the way there," Jack explains, and for whatever reason, he's deeply irritated. "Mush is gone to tell your folks what's happened."

David wonders if anyone's ever going to tell _him_ what happened. "I can walk by myself," he says. "I don't _need_ you guys to—"

"Yeah, that's what you said last time, " Jack interrupts. "And you's just lucky me and Blink's as quick as we is, or you'd've cracked your head twice."

"Three times," Blink adds. "Y'know, once when those bums knocked him 'round, and before when you—"

"Yeah, Blink," Jack snaps. "I get it, and I'll _ask_ ya next time I need help rememberin'."

"Sorry, Jack…"

David opens his mouth to remind Blink that Jack said that word was off limits, except maybe it's only off limits for David, but before he can sort that out he has to snap his mouth shut, _fast_. "Guys," he says. "Guys."

"Yeah, Dave?"

"I'm gonna throw up."

Both Jack and Blink come to an abrupt stop, both of them swivel their heads to look at him. "Jack," Blink starts, "what do we—"

"How should _I_—"

David saves them the trouble of making a decision, and does it right at all of their feet.

* * *

"He's gonna be alright, ain't he, Jack?"

"Davey just needs to sleep it off, he's gonna be fine."

David's sitting on a hard wooden chair and he's holding both hands behind his head, and he has no idea how he got here, but that's nothing new. He lets both his hands fall into his lap, and he notices he's got a red bandana curled around his fingers.

"Hey!" Jack's face appears in front of his out of _nowhere_, his eyes bright in the dim light, even if the rest of the scene is blurred around the edges. "What'd I tell ya?" Jack says. "Keep that back there."

David looks down at the bandana. "This is yours."

"Yeah, now it's yours, 'cause I sure don't want _back_."

Because he's bled all over it, David realizes. Not that it's obvious against the red—except, when he focuses, it kind of is. He gingerly puts the makeshift bandage against the back of his head, he flinches a bit because that stings. He meets Jack's look for a second or two, then he lets his eyes drift around the room.

He's never been here before, the shoddy wooden walls and the stacks of bunks—filled with people he can't make out—are completely unfamiliar. "Where are we?" he asks, and then he adds, "And how'd we get here?"

"Walked."

David's gaze flicks back to Jack, and even if almost nothing is making sense he _knows_ Jack can read the irritation in his look.

And he does, because he holds up his hands and says, "Well, we _did_." He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "This is where I live, Dave, me and lots of the boys. Ain't you been here before?"

_No_, is what David means to say. The words that actually come out of his mouth are, "Why would I have been _here_ before?" But he's right, because after work if they don't part ways or head over to see Medda, they're always going back to the Jacob's, never here.

He doesn't mean anything else by it. And to make that clear, he says, "Well, I _haven't_."

Jack grabs him by the arm and hauls him up to his feet. "'Bout time for you to get yourself some sleep, don'tcha think?" he says. He pulls David behind his as he walks, weaving through the bunks and the handful of kids mulling around. Most everyone is still awake, even the ones in bed are watching with wide, interested eyes. David recognizes most of the faces.

They come to a stop in front of an empty bunk, Jack gestures for him to sit.

David looks around. "Whose bed is this?"

"That's Race's."

"Where's he?"

"He's in mine, over there." Jack nods across the room, and in the sea of rumbled bedclothes and sprawled children, Racetrack might as well be invisible.

David raises an eyebrow, the wheels in his head turning the fasted they have all night. "So where are _you_ going to sleep?"

"Somewhere else. Will ya sit down?"

David sits, and then he peers up.

"What're you lookin' at me for? Go to sleep!" Jack crosses his arms, he's glaring down sternly. David realizes, all of a sudden, that Jack looks just like his _mother_.

And he immediately wishes he didn't, because he's snickering louder than he can possibly muffle, even with one hand clamped over his mouth.

It doesn't help that Jack looks so confused and … even worried, in response. "Have you lost your _mind_?"

There's no way David can explain himself without getting a soc in the arm. 'No, no, I—" More laughter. "—I'm going to sleep."

"Yeah, right."

"No, really." He lies down, and the whole room starts spinning so hard he's got no choice but to squeeze his eyes shut. Everything's already fading. "G'night, Jack."

"Night, Davey…"

* * *

His head is killing him.

That's all David can think, standing over the sink, splashing icy water on his face and into his eyes. His head is _killing_ him. He's already spent a good several minutes prodding the injury with his fingers for absolutely no good reason he can think of, unless making it hurt more counts. He's trying to piece together the previous night—it's slow going.

He remembers heading over to the theater.

He even remembers why. Jack got that _stupid_ idea to sneak in before the newsies' show started and mess it up, pull some kind of prank—because Pulitzer was putting it on, in a show of "good faith." Jack had decided it was an insult, and none of David's protests—"Actually, Jack, we really _don't_ have to do anything about it."—had made so much of a dent.

Groaning, David makes his way back to his bunk—well, no, not his, but _someone's_ bunk, the place he'd woken up in. He sinks down onto the mattress and goes back to prodding his head, pulling at the curls that were matted down with blood.

Maybe the pain will help him remember.

He remembers the fight once they got there. He hadn't even wanted to _come_, he'd said, Jack had answered that maybe he _shouldn't_ have—they were standing on some kind of … scaffolding thing to mess with the lights and so when Jack had shoved him, on accident, _mostly_, well. When his half had crumbled he hadn't had much to stand on.

It was a stupid fight.

After that, the noise had brought the guards.

And then there'd been running, there'd been chasing and leaping and a rusty fire escape. Someone one of the guards, maybe, they'd pushed him … into a wall—after that, nothing.

He thinks harder, rubbing his temples.

Nothing.

But even if the specifics of the night are gone, he still remembers the general. He knows that Jack and everyone else brought him here, they'd taken—okay, probably _dragged_—him into their home and given him a bed to sleep in. He'll probably never be back here, he almost wants to take a look around.

Instead, he gets to his feet and heads for the door. It would be awkward, this isn't _his_ life to poke around in.

He almost makes it out without running into anyone.

And when Jack runs into someone, he literally runs _into_ them. They both walk through the door at the same time, and when in doubt it's always Jack that gets the right of way; David falls back against the wall when they collide, rubbing his chest. "Ow. Hi."

They stand there for a moment, David stands back up again.

"Figured you'd still be down and out," Jack says, not looking at him. He scratches the back of his head like he's trying to figure out something to do with his hands. "You been sleepin' since—"

"It's too late to sell papes," David says. "I thought I'd head back—"

Jack nods.

David really wishes someone else would walk in, right about now, but for once Jack's alone. "Listen," he starts. "Last night—"

"You was right and I was wrong, so I'm sorry," Jack says, his words coming rapid fire. "I said it already but I'm bettin' you don't remember none of it, so there it is. Happy?"

David stares at him, because he'd been about to say thank you, not… whatever Jack had thought he was going to say. "I—not _really_, no." He barely remembers the argument, truth be told, certainly not well enough to still be _mad_ about it. "Wait, you're actually apologizing?"

Jack winces. "Hey, don't rub it in."

"There really _is_ a first time for everything."

Jack _has_ a smart remark for that, David can see it on his face when his head snaps up, but by some miracle he keeps it to himself. "I just wanted to say that," he says. "'Fore you went home."

David keeps looking at him. He's got Jack over a barrel, and he can barely believe it—how often is _that_ going to happen? Probably never again.

But he doesn't push it, because he's a nice, kind, fantastic person. He chuckles and then he says exactly what he means. "Thanks, Jack." He swallows. "You know, for…"

The words work like magic; the tension evaporates out of the air and off Jack's face. "Don't you mention it." He smirks. "And don't come back tomorrow, neither. You look terrible."

"… _Thanks_, Jack."

"What're friends for, right?"

David steps out of doorway of the boarding house, into the busy street, shielding his eyes from the offensively bright light of the sun. "For spotting me a nickel, maybe? Paying for lunch?"

Jack follows him, fishing a cigarette out of his pocket. He lights the match on the railing, giving David a sidelong look with narrowed eyes. "Don't push it," he says.

David laughs. "Wouldn't _dream_ of it."


End file.
